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I live with my girlfriend in a flat on the second floor of a building with four floors. We have an entry telephone at the street-door because it is always locked. This way guests and carriers can press a button to announce their arrival.

The entry telephone is a clever arrangement that my girlfriend and I appreciate a lot, because it saves quite a bit of money if the alternative is to throw rocks at the windows.

But sometimes a neighbour or a deliveryman who is already in the building wants to say hallo. They have two options; they can either press the doorbell or knock repeatedly on the door. Most people knock the door and those who choose to ring the doorbell usually have to leave with unfinished business.

It’s not that we don’t like people who ring our doorbell; we simply can’t hear the bell. Why not? Because it’s not working!

If you have a doorbell that is not working then make it work or take it down. There is no point in keeping utilities that doesn’t work. It is inconvenient to press the doorbell a couple of times and then knocking the door hoping that someone will hear you.

The guest or carrier risk getting impatient or irritated and that’s an unfortunate start of the visit. Make it easy for people who are coming to visit you, that will create better energy.

Not Just the Doorbell

It’s not just the doorbell that has to be working. If you have anything in your house that is not working then ask yourself: Am I going to repair it? If not, then throw it out; get rid of it. If you don’t want to expel your malfunctioning appliances then fix them.

Gadgets and objects that do not serve their purpose will end up cluttering your life; they will bring bad energy and give you worries that you don’t need.

I don’t understand why closets have to be so deep. Standard depth of a bedroom closet is 60 cm in most of the world. Some even prefer the closet depth to be up to 75 cm.

I don’t know about you but I never reach behind what I can see in the front of the closet unless I can remember what’s hiding in the back of the shelf.

I’m not the most patient person in the world and I tend to be a little bit absent-minded. Hence, I can’t remember what’s luring behind the coloured pile of t-shirts and if I by some miracle actually remember having a piece of clothe that doesn’t spring to my eyes the second I open the closet door, then hell breaks loose.

My problem is that I don’t know if that one sock chose to stay in the dryer downstairs or if it has crawled to the back of my closet. Well, it could also be hiding in the laundry basket – who knows?

What would you do in this situation? – I take out the clothes that are comfortably sitting in the front row of the closet, covering about half of the shelf. The clothes jump up and down unfolding themselves until they are all piled up on the bed. Now I turn on a flashlight to get a better view of the back of my closet.

Sometimes I find what I was looking for … last year! But usually I don’t find anything but items that are so old I forgot I had them. Now my next challenge is to fit the pile on the bed into the front row again. It usually doesn’t fit unless I refold it and if I don’t have the time to fold up my clothes then I stuff it all into the closet again and some of it ends on the back-row to be forgotten.

We wear 20 % of our clothes 80 % of the time! Yes, I know! That’s because 80 % of the closet is covered in darkness – you never see what’s in there!

Clothes that are resting on hangers need the space in the back of the bedroom closet, but I don’t need extra space for clothes that I don’t wear. My dream is to find a set of shelves with doors that is about 30-40 cm deep. I would decorate a wall in the bedroom with these practical and functional shelves and get rid of all the clothes that are stored in the back of the 60 cm deep bedroom closet.

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It’s time for some great tips on how to declutter. I have found a couple of videos on YouTube that you can use for inspiration.

Oprah’s organising guru shares his tips to declutter

Peter Walsh is an organising guru and in this video he gives some great ideas to declutter your kitchen drawer, your closet and you writing table.

What I like most about this video is the way Peter Walsh suggests that we focus. We tend to focus on the things that clutter an area or space, but instead we should focus on the function of this space.

I’m going to try out his tips on one of my drawers where I keep … well, I don’t really know what’s in there but I intend to find out.

Desk Declutter

If you have a bunch of cluttered wires then here is some good advice from Derek Johnson.

Well, it’s not that my personality is cluttered but when I try to communicate who I am and what I do, then people tend to get confused by what I say. I have many diverse interests and I have taken a million courses and have more than one education. I have had many different jobs because I have so many areas of interests. To another person this gives a tangled image of a person that doesn’t know what he wants.

E.g. it is common to ask what one another do when you meet at a party. My answer to this question was something like: I have a master of science in strategy and management, I work as a reflexologist and I study philosophy at the university; I dedicate my free time to writing, dancing and martial arts.

Yes, read it again because I didn’t make it up; actually this was the short version of what I was doing at that time. I could easily add a lot more. The problem was that my many interests gave other people a bad impression. Well, most people were impressed by my activities but few knew what to do with the information.

It was hard for me to get at proper job and even be invited to job interviews. I didn’t understand it then because I had so many qualifications that someone was bound to be able to make use of at least a few of them. But then I tried to see it from other people’s point of view and I realised that my personality was cluttered.

I spend about one year decluttering and organising my image. I cut my CV from ten pages to two pages. I made a strategy of how I wanted other people to see me. At that time I wanted to build I business on practicing reflexology and I started to market myself as independent reflexologist. Nothing else.

I told it to everybody and especially to my close social network. What I did for a living confused my close friends, but now everyone knows what I do.

People need to put you in a box that fit into their perception of the world. If they can’t then they get confused. Bad energy confuses us and bad energy comes from clutter.

I have been detangling my mixed-up life for about four years and I have still much work to do. I am learning how to focus and keep my life simple. Since I started doing that I have had much more success in my life.